Comments on: Tales from the Projection Booth

By: Razor

Razor — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:41:04 +0000

Did u ever keep any 35mm frames. I did. My posters and stills , hundreds of them , were thrown outside by my mom. Tsk tsk.

By: keelsetter

keelsetter — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:15:17 +0000

I think you may have misunderstood my reply to Dave, as I still show all 35mm prints and employ union projectionists. As to the BPLFP series that now shows mostly digital stuff, no projectionists were fired in that transition because their program used to be only 16mm prints that were also run by the programmer himself!

By: brent

brent — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:21:52 +0000

Digital projection – BAH, HUMBUG! Don’t you realize you’re putting us real projectionists (28 years & counting) out of business?

By: keelsetter

keelsetter — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:07:40 +0000

The Boulder Public Library Film Program (BPLFP) is programmed by Joel Haertling (son of the famous architect, Charles Haertling). He has adventurous and eclectic taste. Their program used to rely solely on 16mm prints, but now most of the stuff they show is via digital projection. Information about my series can be found at internationalfilmseries.com – check it out sometime!

By: Dave @FilmBuzz Taylor

Dave @FilmBuzz Taylor — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:18:52 +0000

“I program an art-house calendar film series in Boulder.” Holy cow, I live in Boulder. Are you talking Boulder, Colorado? And if so, are you talking about the auditorium in the main public library? We should talk… :-)

By: brent

brent — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:46:03 +0000

I attended a screening of Peter Watkins’ THE WAR GAME once. The projector was in the back of the room. During the movie we heard a thump, a cry – and the roll of film went rolling down the aisle between the audience members, pursued by the projectionist. Believe it or not, the film was still running in the gate. It was much more fun watching him chase it than the movie.

By: keelsetter

keelsetter — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:18:33 +0000

Harold’s death had a huge effect on me and staff. Another one of my projectionists refused to set foot in the booth, and stopped working for us altogether, because he insisted the booth was now haunted (or, at least, cursed). I’ve never seen the rest of I WENT DOWN, so I can’t speak to whether it may have had another interpretable meaning beyond the ironic title. What I can say is that Harold had already retired and was filling in shifts with us because he enjoyed working with reel-to-reel machines and genuinely missed them, since most booths are on automated platter systems. In Harold’s honor, he being a consummate card-player, we still have a deck of cards in the booth.

By: RHS

RHS — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:56:58 +0000

That’s a terrible story regarding your friend Harold Conway Curtis. I fear nothing so much as an ironic death.

By: keelsetter

keelsetter — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:15:48 +0000

Jeff, your story jogged my memory about something my Union projectionist shared with staffers regarding some shifts he put in at a seedy porno theater in Denver back in the seventies. (Needless to say, what follows is a bit off-color and not meant for family consumption.) Prankster that he is, he’d open the window to the projection booth and squirt out hand-cream lotion that would shoot out onto unsuspecting customers. You could probably do something similar these days at a screening of SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, I suppose.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:03:36 +0000

I don’t have any projectionist stories to rival yours but I do remember a time when THE DAY OF THE JACKAL (the 1973 version) was being screened at the University of Georgia’s film program and the projectionist took a quick break and accidentally locked himself out of the booth. He hadn’t properly secured the reel he had just started and it came off the projector and the film began spooling all over the floor as people tried to force the door open and stop the projector. We watched helplessly as the unspooled film covered the floor and then the projectionist comes back and wonders what the hell is going on.